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40 posts from March 2007

The Pale Blue Dot never fails to bring tears to my eyes, and over the course of my life I've always been fascinated and moved by photos from outer space.

My earliest memory of extraterrestrial photography was a set of glossy photos that Voyager took of Jupiter, (on its way out of the solar system to V'gerland, natch.) The photos were given to my great grandparents, when they opened a checking account at a long-forgotten local bank in Northridge, specifically to provide their great grandchildren with the packet of photos.

It's not a great picture of Jupiter, but that's not the point. The point is that the photograph was taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which is currently orbiting Saturn, approximately 1.8 billion km from Jupiter. A similar picture of Earth would only light up a single pixel in Cassini's camera.

I love it. It's like humans can look at that picture and say, "Hey! Look what we did!"

If you like the music I write about on my blog, or share on my last.fm profile, and you'd like to connect and share music with other WWdN:iX readers, this group is for you. You won't find any Top 40 crap, but you will find Pink Floyd, Wilco, Depeche Mode, Oingo Boingo, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Nada Surf, The Conet Project, Death Cab for Cutie, Zeppelin, Miles Davis, Underworld and a ton of indie stuff you didn't even know you liked.

I realize that Music for Exile is kind of a lame title. I thought it was close to Music for Airports, and we all know that I enjoy an obscure reference that I ruin by over-explaining. The important thing is, for forty-six blissful seconds, I'm not bashing my head against a wall trying to fix the second act of this story.

I don't talk about it very much here, but we're working really hard at Netscape to create a place on the Intertubes that's worth parking your truck at* a few times a day. I can't talk about the upcoming stuff, but holy crap is it cool.

It's a pretty big deal for Netscape.com to move from total obscurity to number two in its category in just a few months, and that's entirely because of Jason's vision, the dev team's work, and the leadership of C.K., then Ryan, and the dedicated work of the anchors and navigators.

Great job, Netscape team!

*Yeah, "parking your truck at." I guess I should git 'er done or something, y'alls. Yee-haw. I are a smart talkin' guy!

I had a really upsetting dream (which mercifully ended when I woke up this morning) in which I was being chased by a giant spider. It was one of those "I can't seem to move very quickly to get away from this thing that's chasing me" things, and upon waking, I knew exactly why it invaded my otherwise restful night: I'm working on the rewrite of this writing project (due in one week's time) and in closing some holes, I've opened up a whole bunch more. I told my friend yesterday, "it's like trying to get the babelfish in the Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy interactive fiction game."

I've really enjoyed the challenge and the few rewarding moments that have surprised me on this project have really been fantastic, but I'm at this really unpleasant but inevitable valley in my creative process, where I'm convinced everything I've written is shit, and I should just dump it all in the shredder.

I'm sure some of the writers out there will agree that, when we reach this point, it's actually a good sign that I'm getting close to the point where it all comes together and I just get out of the way and let the ideas and characters tell me where to go.

Ah, but while I'm stuck here, it really sucks, and as a result there isn't a whole lot of blogging from me while I work it all out.

However, I put up a Geek in Review yesterday that I hope everyone will read:

I'm not a huge fan of monopolies. As a consumer, and as a creator, I want to have as many choices and options as I can for interacting with content and audience.

That just makes sense, right? More choices is better, free market, etc. etc. etc. I mean, can you imagine a world where you go to turn on your radio, and all you can get is a top 40 station? "Now Wil, you're just being silly." You say, "I'll just listen to an indie station on the internet. I'll never have to hear the Red Hot Chili Peppers or Ashlee Simpson ever again."

Not so fast, Captain Smugs-a-lot. The douchebags at the RIAA (who, I have decided, have realized that they've failed to evolve with their industry and are now determined to destroy it) are working overtime to completely destroy our ability to enjoy online radio, like Radio Paradise, Soma.fm, radioio, and Pandora.

What they essentially want to do is increase the royalty payments that Internet broadcasters pay to SoundExchange (an RIAA organization) to such an outrageously high rate that many of them are forced out of business. The RIAA claim that they are working to "protect their artists." Like every other claim the RIAA makes, this is complete and utter bullshit. They realize that they can't force their outdated Big Hit business model on Longtail consumers any more, so rather than adapt to survive in the current marketplace, they're going to destroy it, and roll radio back to the pre-internet years when they could safely sit in their glass towers and twirl their mustaches while lighting cigars with 100 dollar bills. Uh, while we all listened to Toto and Survivor and liked it.

I've been listening to a ton of Internet radio while I've worked this week, so this particular issue, which I would care about no matter what, really hits close to home for me.

I hope you'll all go read it and share it with your friends. It really is yet another example of the Old Way trying to destroy the New Way, because it doesn't know how to adapt to a changing world. What's frightening is how likely they are to succeed, if we don't fight back and fight back hard.

If you're a Munchkin aficionado like I am (Oh! That makes me wish I could do Photoshop: Someone should design a Cigar Aficionado parody cover called Munchkin Aficionado. Notes: CA is always very pretentious, materialistic, and self-important. It's like Cosmo for cigar nerds, but it pretends that it isn't. Please also note that none of these facts ever stopped me from reading and enjoying it. Here's a big honkin' pile of reference covers. John Kovalic: I'm looking in your direction.)

Anyway, as I was saying, before I was distracted by the pretty lights, if you're a Munchkin Aficionado like I am, I believe this cartoon from Supermegatopia will make you chuckle.

I've been living in this weird original Star Trek sort of . . . uh . . . space . . . for a few weeks, so I think I appreciated last night's episode more than I ever have, and I've seen it at least a dozen times.

Anyway, this is as good a time as any to share some "Good news, everyone!"

I was invited to the big honkin' Vegas Star Trek convention in August, and I accepted. I don't know what specific day I'll be performing on stage, but I'll be there for at least three days with books and jokes and obscure references to MST3K (there will be no admittance during the exciting rock climbing portion of my appearance, sorry.)

I don't know if there's a Las Vegas demand for me at Eventful, but I made an event page for WWdN readers to say "I'm going there!" which we can use to coordinate a meet-up or something. That should be kind of cool, right? Maybe we can work out a live poker tournament at the Hilton, if enough people are interested.

Lots more details to come, including what stuff I'll bring to perform, as we get closer to the big date.

I probably had just as bad a drooling fanboy reaction as WW had meeting WFS. Here was a guy, my age, +/-2, who was on Star Trek! We stood there chatting while RA impatiently looked at his watch. I mentioned I was getting a tour of the sets.

WW: Tell you what. *I'll* show him around for a few minutes until you get back.

And that's how I ended up chatting with Wil Wheaton on the sets of Star Trek for about 15 or 20 minutes. I got to watch a scene being shot (when the Klingons are breaking out of the security cell, Wil and I are hiding on the other side of the wall the Klingon is using as cover), Wil himself showed me Engineering and a couple of other sets, and only reluctantly told me that he had to go to get ready for something.

There's more, which you may want to read if I'm reluctant to post it, because I kind of feel like I'm saying, "hey! I am so great! Everyone look at how great I am! Woo! Woo! Look at me! Woo!" But the thing is . . . I spent about ten hours a day on the set, surrounded by adults who expected me to act in a professional manner, so when I got a chance to goof off a little bit with someone close to my age who also happened to be a bit of a geek (this is why The First Duty was my favorite episode to film) I grabbed that opportunity by the lips and yanked (you win a cookie if you get that reference. No cheating with Google. I'll know.)

So I remember times like this, when there was someone my age, who liked Trek as much as I did, who came to visit the set. It was always exciting to me that:1) there was someone my age to talk to, and 2) there was someone my age who was as excited about it as I was. It rules the most that Jester recalls this day, and took the time to share it publicly.

It also reminds me of this one time when I really was the asshole: Anne and I, long before we were married, and had in fact been dating for less than a year, flew to London for a huge Star Trek convention. She got violently ill on the flight, and I spent several hours not sleeping or relaxing while I attempted to make my vomiting girlfriend comfortable (I'll say it for you: yeah, that happened a lot. har. har. har.) When we finally landed at Heathrow, I was exhausted, and I looked and felt like hell. All I wanted to do was get to our hotel and take a nap.

When we were waiting to clear customs, a young girl came up to me and told me how much she loved my work. She asked me if I'd take a picture with her and her drill team, who were there for a competition or something.

I did my best to be patient and kind, but I told her that I was exhausted, and I looked and felt like hell. She was visibly disappointed, but said that she understood and apologized for bothering me.

"You know," Anne (who had been barfing her brains out the entire flight, and surely felt worse than me) said, "that girl was really excited to meet you, and even though you're exhausted, it only takes a minute to give her a good memory, or a lousy one."

This began a pattern of Anne being right, and me saying, "You're right."

I found the girl, who was with her team, and I told her that I was really sorry for blowing her off. I told her how exhausted I was, but I really appreciated her kind comments about my work, and if she was still interested, I'd be happy to take a picture with her and her team.

She blushed, her friends giggled, and I ended up posing for pictures with most of them individually, all of them as a team, and signing a few autographs. It ended up being really cool, and was a moment that profoundly changed the way I dealt with that "celebrity" thing that I was never really comfortable with: though I always thought "celebrity" was bullshit, it was one of the first times I realized that, even though I didn't think of myself in those terms, there were some people who did, and with that came a certain amount of responsibility.

It's . . . interesting . . . to me that I have that moment so clearly burned into my mind. I wonder if those girls even recall it, or if they even have those pictures. But I'm pretty sure that if I'd just gone to my hotel and taken a nap, they would recall that time I was the asshole, and I wouldn't recall it at all.

I also wouldn't have learned a very important lesson from my future wife that I very much took to heart.

I know theat there were lots of moments in my teenage years and early twenties when I really was the asshole. There were times when I was extremely selfish, immature, unhappy, and uncomfortable in my own skin. These were not good times to meet me, and though they are over a decade in the past, I occasionally recall some dick move I pulled somewhere, and I seriously want to find some way to apologize and make whatever dick thing I did right. TB, KB, and LN are three people who immediately spring to mind.

I know that I can't travel back in time to change those things I did that I regret, but as I've written before, I really like who I am now, and I have a wonderful, wonderful life. Like Picard said in Tapestry, "There are many parts of my youth that I'm not proud of... there were loose threads . . . untidy parts of me that I would like to remove. But when I pulled on one of those threads . . . it had unraveled the tapestry of my life."

Jester's story is part of my tapestry, that I don't mind looking at. I'm really grateful that he shared it.